Confiteria Ideal

Dos medialunas y un cortado.

Tres medilunas con queso y jamon y un cortado.

A cortado is a wonderful, short expresso with just a dollop of foamy milk dropped on top. A media luna is a thin, wispy looking croissant, covered at times in a sheer of sugar, at others, bare and buttery. The one this morning, or what I am currently calling morning after coming home at 5:45am last night and sleeping until almost noon, is crispy and perfect, from Mamma Rosa's cafe and wine and ham shop on the fringes of Palermo. It's 27 degrees out in the shade. I've never seen so many beautiful people in one place in my life.

I also haven't had so much caffeinated coffee since Cuba. Perhaps that explains the events of yesterday, which seemed to keep unrolling around me in a strange dance.

The photography session with the Prince of Pakistan and his family took place before the lunch they served us, at the residence for the Ambassador, in an old colonial building near Puerto Madero. The sounds of car horns and traffic faded into the background as Jocelyn and I were taken upstairs in an old, cage elevator and introduced to the Prince's parents and brother. The floors are covered in Persian rugs and the walls with the ambassador's art, strong, direct women gazing out of each painting, surrounded by colour. She was dressed in a sari of salmon silk and gold thread, and the sons posed with practiced smiles as I held the light reflector and Jocelyn directed them and shot. I had walked there from the outskirts of Recoleta, winding through the leafy, narrow streets and pausing every half hour for more coffee. After the photo shoot we had a four course lunch of traditional Pakistani food, served while the father discussed poetry and the sons told us about their international finance jobs. They teased one another. They were lovely. Choukri to the family for their generosity.

On the walk back to Plaza Mayo, we passed Confiteria Ideal and dropped in to ask the prices for tango classes. On a whim, I left Jocelyn in the square--her meetings with a co-worker begin at 8pm every week and last until midnight, when they go to dinner--and walked back for a lesson. The ceiling of Confiteria is carved wood filigree. Marble stairs lead to the second floor dance hall. Giant fans mounted on posts loom down from the plaster walls between antique mirrors. The space has been a traditional tango gathering spot since 1912.

Travelling at 36 is so much better than at 21. I will do anything. I will show up to a class sin pareja and not feel lonely or shy. I thought I would end up practicing alone, but at the last minute, an Argentine from Patagonia, a geologist with a one night layover in the city, showed up and took me through first the class, then the entire evening of milonga, until 1am. It was only in the last hour that he revealed himself as one of four teachers of tango in his hometown. When he goes back, he's putting on the town's tango festival. Suffice to say I was in good hands.

I watched while we talked about Patagonia and the oil and gas industry in the country. Picture one hundred Renes and Hildas (my gorgeous Argentine tango teachers at home); picture two things becoming one and gliding around the floor, some with constant flarings of heels, some with barely perceptible turns. Men in their eighties. Women with bellies, their breasts pressed against the man's chest, their heads turned to the side and their faces simultaneously nostalgic, bored, impassioned and intense with concentration. Men in suits with spats. Women with heels three inches high. I knew I wasn't supposed to be grinning when the geologist could coax me onto the floor, but I couldn't help myself. Argentina. Outside, the city darkened and people began thinking about taking a nap before a midnight dinner. The room was stifling with heat; the Oswaldo the geologist dripped; the fat dancer, who had so much grace when on the floor, fanned himself; the Australian couple who had taken their first lesson that evening watched from their table, the woman longingly, the man with slight panic. Poor men who are learning. So much depends on them knowing the moves. Though our teacher said the most helpful thing that I have heard thus far; tango is improvisation and style, not steps--he purposefully taught us six beats of an eight beat move so that it could be finished as one liked, with a front ocho, with a traditional close, with a molineta; como quieres.

I am a terrible dancer, but I left feeling as if I had been wrung out and filled again with amber. My friend Garth--from Canada--appeared at midnight and after the dancing ended Garth and I found a bar on Avenida de Mayo that was still open and talked about poetry until the sun rose. Minutes before we sat down, two men high on meth tried to mug me. I pushed his hands from my throat and we continued walking to the bar. It didn't even arouse a feeling of panic. The paradoxes of the city seem just like the ones I have learned to live with and love in Mexico City, in Sevilla, in Bangkok, in Barcelona or New York. I am glad, and realize I am lucky, however, to still have my computer (which I was carrying at the time) on which to write all of this.

Seis Cortados

Warm, smoky, humid wind in LA, as I changed planes at LAX, and a bar staff at the airport who joked in Spanish as they changed shift. Then the long, sardine flight across the equator to first Lima, then Buenos Aires, city of Jacarundas in high bloom, traffic, curly haired taxi drivers and lovely Jocelyn and her fabulous apartment in the heart of Belgrano, a leafy neighbourhood near the centre of the city.

For a scant two weeks, I am here to drink as much red wine in brown bars as I can, tag along in Jocelyn's vida cotidiana (on Tuesday I will act as her assistant while she photographs the Ambassador of Pakistan's family (her son is a prince with two palaces), and hopefully complete a final edit of the Garry Oak book for New Star Press. Days of half work, half play.

In the meantime, the light is perfect, the temperature is a perfect 22 degrees at 7pm and I have memories of the first Argentine I saw in the airport who walked past me as I exited the security gates; he was carrying six shots of expresso in tiny dixie cups for his friends--cortados. Then there was also the sand and snow hills of the Andes and their drifts of cascading colour, the small lights of Mexican towns far below and the lovely American Customs man (who would have thought those words would go together) who let me through with four giant bottles of sunscreen in my carry-on as gifts for Jocelyn. When the city wakes again, we're going grocery shopping for ingredients for my first asada and for wine. It's nice to leap into someone else's life. It's nice to feel mine moving and find such friendliness already on the other side of the world.

Image courtesy of vtveen. www.flickr.com

Wags

My lovely, lovely dog, swimming this August in the clear depths of Ross Lake, near Cat Island.

Men Die for Lack of It

Last weekend I attended a day long conference at the University of Victoria put on by the Center for Religion and Culture Studies. Featuring four of our country's best known writer: Jan Zwicky, Alisa Kirk, Anne Michaels and Don Domanski, the free seminar brought to the fore some of the best thinking on poetry and contemplation that is on offer these days. Needless to say, it was a full house.

The conference was divided in two, with readings and hour long discussions divided by lunch. The morning session was the most interesting, with Tim Lilburn moderating a panel discussion with Zwicky and Michaels. A visiting prof from the French department provided a reader's perspective. Zwicky's talk could easily be transcribed directly and published, so spare, exact and sharp were her comments. Michaels, though more verbose, was equally as astute. And Lilburn, as always, was the perfect host--gentle, probing, full of humility, but with great passion for the great thoughts.

I have a recording of the session, a snippet of which I'll post here.

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When I was sitting, listening to Zwicky, Lilburn and Michaels talk, I kept seeing the image of a giant boulder, resting in the air above and behind them. It rocked and spun slowly, held up by their words. If the daily, quotidian life is the rock we keep pushing up the hill, their words were the magic that keep that stone in the air, never falling. A necessary shadow, reminding us of our fragility, of the work that contemplation and poetry takes. Of the joy in the keeping-in-air of its particular and peculiar thought. It's November, but there is still hope in the world.

Mary Lake: Grassroots Caring + Social Media = A Clever Campaign

We're all familiar with the parcels of land around the south island, and around the world, that need our assistance. From the Amazon rain forests to the Boreal forest in Northern Alberta, from Sandcut Beach on the Juan de Fuca West Coast to Madrona Farm, there's always an ecosystem or a parcel of land that needs saving. It can be difficult not only to choose which one to support, but also to get the word out to the wider world. Sometimes, however, a different twist is all that's needed to inject some new life into a campaign. Take for example the recently launched grassroots social media campaign to protect and save Mary Lake, in the Highlands District of Southern Vancouver Island.

The Mary Lake property, which includes the whole of the lake, is located on Millstream Road in the Highlands. The dry coastal Douglas fir forest, one of our south island's most threatened ecosystems, surrounds a pristine lake festooned with water lilies and lined with mossy rock outcrops, wetlands and trails. The 107 acre parcel is a prime example of native plant and animal life and is one of the last undeveloped lakes in the area.

So what makes this campaign special? For one: social media. Though the campaign has a website, organizers are using Twitter and Facebook to spread the word about the property. Retweets and Facebook "likes" get the word out, and drive people to the site, where a series of short videos on the property and a simple paypal donation system allow people to easily contribute.

Secondly, donations are given an interesting twist through the "purchase" of one or more square metres of land. You can get a square forest metre for $10; a square lakeside metre costs $40. Put your name to as many parcels as you like, and see the tangible results of your purchase on the interactive map created specially for the campaign. Giving people a bird's eye view of the protected portions (and watching that patchwork grow, daily) is a great way of showing the impact we can have through grassroots donations. Similar to micro-credit loans systems, this system uses a large number of people and a low donation threshold to create a big impact.

The campaign to save Mary Lake deserves the attention it's getting; it may also be the mark of a new generation of environmentally concerned citizens who want to see immediate tangible results for their contributions.

Panel on Energy, SEJ Afternoon Plenary, 2010

Kieran Suckling, Executive Director of the Center for Biological Diversity, sits third in a row of four guests during the final lunch Plenary at the SEJ conference on Sunday, October 16, and his dire view of the energy situation in the US causes my table mates to give one another surprised looks. “Obama has failed,” he says, in a laconic but vehement voice. He’s judged as crabby, but probably right. In a few short minutes, during his first opportunity to talk, he lambastes the Obama administration for its lack of initiative and failure to act during what has been an historic time in American presidential history.

“The Obama administration was given an unprecedented opportunity, and it has not stepped up.” He leans back in his chair and continues. “Are we going to remove the massive subsidization of fossil fuels? Are we going to say, ‘Today we begin the ramp down of offshore oil drilling.’ There is no possibility of being able to clean up a spill of any magnitude in the Arctic, and yet the Obama administration continues to go forward with this.” His listing of the failures of the current government is refreshing, jolting and drops a sobering pall over the tables of journalists.

Energy issues are a huge topic today and for good reason. As Randy Udall, Independent Energy Consultant and former Director for the Community Office for Resource Efficiency and Co-Founder, Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas-USA says, “We have been born into the oil tribe. We consume our body weight in petroleum every seven days. Half the fossil fuel on the planet has been burned in the last twenty years. This is why we have a climate change problem. It’s a problem of abundance.” What we are most missing, he argues, is an appreciation, even a love, an acknowledgement of what these fossil fuel resources have meant to us, and how important they’ve been. At the same time that we understand this, we need to accelerate a move away from them.

It’s a holistic view, but one that may not be forceful enough, given the current situation with oil reserves, greenhouse gas emissions and a rapidly warming planet. But don’t say the words global warming to Karen Harbert.

Harbert is the Director of the Institute of 21st Century Energy, US Chamber of Commerce. “We say we want alternative energy,” she says, “but it can take 18 years to get a permit for renewable energy projects in this country. Is this really furthering our desire for a low carbon future, or standing in the way of it?”

Harbert ends up in hot water during the question period of the Plenary. A journalist asks her why her Institute supports Republican candidates who have questioned, or even disputed, the idea of climate change. “The problem with this debate is that you are supposed to be for or against. I want to look at the solutions, not the problems.” The problem with this is that it discounts the science.

If we look only forward we are no better, as the journalist also points out, than the Institute for 21st Century Energy’s Index of US Energy Security Risk, which fails to mention the link between carbon dioxide and global warming. Harbert’s answer? “We are not going to go down the science route.”

Kieran and Udall are the only two panel members who speak with clarity on the issue of energy during this panel. Nancy Sutley, of the Obama Administration, also demurs and hesitates. It will take time to find energy alternatives to replace fossil fuels, she says. She will not commit to yes or no on the issue and shifts the blame when pointedly questioned. “The lack of broad action on energy,” she says, “is due to congressional inaction, not executive indecision.”

Suckling's reason again comes to the fore. “Why does industry get to determine where to do alternative energy on public lands? If you want to avoid environmental litigation, you have to have the government lead, and the government is not leading.” That’s why, he says, we have these battles between environmentalists and industry over placement of wind turbines, over solar panels, over natural gas exploration.

What there seems to be is a basic disagreement in how to move forward. Harbert is interested in the future, but it’s unclear how she plans to get there when her center supports Republican candidates who question the scientific validity of global warming. To some on the panel, namely Herbert, there seems to be a questioning of the science. For others, such as Udall and Suckling, the science is unquestionable, but again, they differ in how best to use this science in order to fix the problem of energy issues. Suckling's critique asks if it is really too late. Where Udall sees opportunity, he sees pure failure.

Udall also posits that if we simply redirected some of our spending on military, we could shut down every coal plant in the country. Why not do this? Because of the massive machinery of fear which has gathered such momentum in this country. Diverting money away from attempts to catch 50 Al Khaida in Afghanistan would be to admit that the threat is not so great as we think. It would be to admit that there are more pressing problems. Setting aside military spending as a separate topic, everyone on the panel would agree that energy is a very pressing issue. But when it comes to finding solutions, and finding fool proof ways of putting those solutions into practice, trouble arises, and it isn’t going away any time soon.

SEJ Indian Country Field Trip Video, October 14, 2010

Flathead Tribes Bison Reserve, SEJ Conference, 2010



Shot and edited by Maleea Acker

The Tar Sands Mini Showdown at SEJ

On Thursday, October 15, a panel gathered in Missoula, Montana during the Society of Environmental Journalists’ annual conference to discuss the Tar Sands development in Northern Alberta. Present were Preston McEachern, Section Head of Science and Research, Alberta Environment, Peter Hodson, Department of Biology and School of Environmental Studies, Queen's University, Andrew Logan, Director of the Oil and Gas program, CERES, and Janet Annesley, Vice President, Communications, for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. The moderator was Hanneke Brooymans, a seasoned tar sands reporter based in Edmonton.

If fully developed, the tar sands will directly impact more than 2,000 square kilometres of northern Alberta. From the ducks that died in the tailings pond near Fort McMurray to questions now being asked about human health and safety for those living near the developments, the sands are an indisputably difficult and controversial way to extract oil from the earth. Estimates are that two barrels of water are used for each barrel of oil extracted. And the polluting effects of fracking, drilling and disposing of used water are well documented.

Andrew Logan admits to standing in the grey area of a very black and white fight, and states his case in a quiet but persuasive voice. “The economics of the tar sands are somewhat tenuous at best. Our concern is, once you begin to layer in other costs: carbon, water scarcity, cleaning tailings ponds and rehabilitating land, then the scale of the liability and the full cost of the development is too much. Our investors want to see the tar sands project looked at more holistically.”

Is it only money that will change people’s minds? The Beaver Lake Cree are in process of  launching a Constitutional challenge against the Canadian government for violation of their treaty enshrined right to hunt, fish and gather on their traditional lands. With the advent of the tar sands, caribou herd numbers in the area have plummeted. Rather than make do with environmental protests or boycotts, the Beaver Lake Cree have decided, using famed Woodward and Company Law firm, to fight the tar sands using the Canadian Constitution.

Logan continues with a list of statistics. Only a quarter of the projects have any plan for water use. Pollution in the Athabaska River may be the direct result of nearby oil industry operations and not a naturally occurring source. “What we’re looking for is a frank discussion of the problems and the possible solutions for these projects.” It’s a case of ‘show me’ versus ‘trust me,’ and despite assurances from Preston McEachern, there isn’t necessarily a reason to be greatly optimistic. What we’re seeing right now in the tar sands development, says Logan, does not give anyone huge confidence that we’ll get the answers we’re looking for.

Janet Annesley is a practiced and cool speaker, at least at first. Half the remaining investable oil in the world lies in the tar sands, she says, we need to realize we’re all in this together. “The world needs energy. And the reality is that only a small percentage of our energy needs can be supplied by alternative energy sources.” She quotes James Cameron, who while visiting the sands recently apparently said, “this resource could be a blessing or a curse.” It becomes obvious very quickly which side of this quote she’s trying to work.

What’s surprising is that the panel is comprised of two tar sands proponents, the CERES representative and only one scientist. In the US, I can’t help thinking that we must look a little like a bumbling, unconcerned populace. There are many scientific studies that show the sands are not doing harm to the environment. The trouble is, many of these studies are paid for by the petroleum producers themselves, or by the Alberta government, whose hands are so deep in the oil pot that they cannot possibly be called an impartial body. And studies that show an opposing view are reluctant to say, definitively, that there are links between the tar sands and wide spread pollution or health concerns. Better disclosure, as the Logan says, will help bring opposing studies greater validity. As well as better planning and longer term thinking. He’s right. How can the government simultaneously guard the environment while supporting the tar sands development?

The panel talk concludes on an uncertain note, and I hope that questions from the conference participants will bring more to light. “Our science,” says Peter Hodson, “may not be capable of producing the answers that we need at the present moment.”

The first question from the audience concerns an article in the local Missoula paper this morning. Giant rakes needed for the tar sands projects are being shipped up small highways from the Western United States up to Alberta. This backyard concern takes up almost a third of the question period. There are no questions about caribou habitat or tailings ponds and there is only one about health effects for people living near the tar sands.

So I stand up, state my name, and ask for thoughts on the Beaver Lake Cree’s case and the destruction of caribou habitat. The only person who comments is Janet Annesley. Who says exactly what one would expect. Who says the law suit concerns the government, not the companies she represents. Who says that she has ongoing discussions with First Nations in the area and greatly respects the fact that treaties are enshrined in the constitution. But who avoids talk of the case itself, or of the caribou. 

So I lean down to Marty Cobenais, Pipeline Organizer with the Indigenous Environmental Network, who has just beckoned me across the room to whisper the real answers in my ear. We’re nodding and whispering, and the next thing I know, Janet is calling to me from her microphone. “Excuse me. I’m answering your question but it doesn’t even look like you’re listening to my answer. Are you even listening to me? I’m putting a lot of effort into my response.” The moderator blushes. An electric charge goes through the room. A woman in the audience has my back before I can respond, “Why, is there going to be a quiz?” Everyone laughs. “I’m putting a lot of effort into trying to understand you,” I counter, lamely, but with more than a little pleasure. Janet Annesley’s face sets, and she wraps up.

No one else addresses the question of the caribou, or the three hundred Cree who have been brave enough to face off against oil giants such as Suncor and Shell Oil. Afterward, I am inundated by smiling conference attendees, who assure me Janet has shown her true colours. True, perhaps, but until we get this issue out to the entire world, a not just to a few supporters in England and across our own country, I’m just a shit disturber facing off against a single representative for the giants.

Seattle Missoula: Where is Fall?

The winding forested tracts of the Cascades outside of Seattle gave way more quickly than I had anticipated, right after Snoqualmie Pass. At 10 am I was in Pike street market, grabbing cheese, coffee and breakfast sandwiches for Drew and I while he circled the block; by 11am I was doing almost 100 miles an hour on the straight, wind farm covered rises and golden grazing land that surround the i90. And all around me, the warm wind that felt so strange for this time of year. I stepped out of the car near Moses Lake and the dry grass scent of late summer hit me like a sauna. Where was Fall? I wondered.

Idaho, as well, was not what I expected. As we crossed the border, clouds and rain hemmed in the road and the pines gave way to cedar, a carpet of moss and tamarack. The forest continued all the way through the top end of the state. No potato fields, no wheat, no chasing the harvest up the continent, as that beautiful article in Harper's told of, years ago. After I crossed over the pass near Coeur d'Alene, cedars changed to black spruce and then back to high mountain pine--untouched, as far as I could see, by mountain pine beetle. Sage brush and cactus reappeared.

My friends Meera Subramanian and Rusty, who I have met met here for two days of hiking and, hopefully, raptor banding, before the Society for Environmental Journalists' annual conference begins, explained to me that Missoula County's lack of topsoil is due to the glacier movement and melting that occured during the last ice ages. As the ice melted, it took the sediment with it down into the Walla Walla region of Washington, where the topsoil is eight feet deep in some areas.

Lucky them; hardscrabble but beautiful Missoula. As I drove into town, the first thing that greeted me was a giant "350" pinned or placed onto a hillside above town. Yesterday was 10-10-10, the grand culmination of the 350 parts (of carbon) per million movement. 350 is the number over which we cannot go, if we expect the world to survive and look anything like what we know it to be at present. Beyond this level of carbon in the atmosphere, mass extinction and the extreme effects of global warming may render the world uninhabitable. I joined Rusty and Meera on the B&B by the river that we're staying in for the next two nights. We drank wine and ate cheese on the wide wooden porch; the warm wind continued into late evening and made the river flow both ways.

Feast Days

Suspiciously unaffected by jetlag, perhaps due to late nights watching good movies and rambling the streets of Barcelona's Gracia district for the last six nights of my journey, I am now back home, safe, fairly sound, and very well-fed. Barcelona is a wonderful city. I left the mountains on the 25th of April to spend a few nights as a guest at friends of Cesca and Lluís, Matthew and his son Tijiane. They live in a barrio just north of the centre of the city, filled with stained glass apartment buildings from the art deco era, wonderful markets and fresh bread and cheese at practically every corner. I saw much Gaudí, many museums, and walked from morning until night each day through the city. Barcelonians are a lovely, curious sort. The women in the markets call you 'guapa,' as in 'qué más quieres, guapa?' and helped me find just the things I couldn´t leave without. Let the gods that shuffle paper and guard like sphinxes not seize upon my head for the publication of this photo.

Thank you for reading, everyone. It´s been a pleasure to write this series over the last few months. Love to you all.

Farrera, mi amor

I am back again. It's very funny. This time, I was packed up, sitting in the library, playing with the computer at 1pm. My bus was scheduled for 2:45 down in the town of Llavorsí. Twelve rich women from Barcelona were due in two hours, to take the entire centre over for a three day painting workshop. I was gazing out at the lump, which is what I´ve affectionately called the hill opposite--we gaze at one another all day, every day, and I'm absolutely in love with it--when in walked Lluís with a look on his face that made me feel like somebody, somewhere, had done something wrong, and perhaps it was me. Perhaps I had left a stain on the floor of my room. Perhaps the balcony was coming unhinged from my standing on it every afternoon, after a previous evenings of Cesca´s chocolate cake and avocado mousse. But then, 12 Barcelona women magically turned into 10 Barcelona women. He said, "You have the option of returning to your room, your same room, if you like. We would certainly like you to." I took it in very slowly, which may have made him say, "And if you need a reorientation, to say, 'you are still in Farrera, you are not currently on a bus to Barcelona' I can do that as well." I took him up on both offers. So that day, I packed up, they cleaned my room, I unpacked again. It was superb. Now I get to stay as long as I like (until near the end of April) and I am free to admire the lump, read, pace, go for walks and bother cuckoos, and generally fall even more in love. Imagine if the call from the missing women had come two hours later! So fortunate!

Other than that, there are only more nature stories of greening pasture, small flowers in the forest, brimming village fountains and sheep sent down to the crossroads to munch on the high grass in the lowlands while waiting for the summer pastures to climb slowly out of hibernation. I'm writing consistantly, and staying has made sense for the work as well as the heart.

That, and I found out tonight over dinner that the small pool in the river that I found, with a hand carved wooden spout that leads water down its small channel to cascade into the pool like a shower, was made by Cisco, the man I spend a day in the orchard with, learning how to graft fruit trees and, eventually, wild rose bushes with cultivated stock roses. (Whose house is a never ending work of art, a story I told last entry.) It makes perfect sense. Cesca said the pool is their version of going to the beach. Today as I was walking along a path to Alendo, the next village over, I came across one of the ubiquitous black water pipes, sticking out of the ground in the middle of nowhere and streaming water from its mouth. The irrigation complexities here are truly amazing. Beside the pipe, resting in the crook of two rocks, was a water glass, ready for use.

Bordes de Burg

Today I went walking with Cesca and Lluís and Lluís´ brother and Axel, the Finn. We walked up over 1000 feet, to 1800 metres through pine woods, across old fields, through scrub, and into a series of old houses used by Shepherds and before by the children of families who took the livestock up to summer on the pastures higher up in the mountains. The houses are stone, build for summer comfort, with chimneys that have turned the insides shiny black with soot, and barns for the animals at night. They would leave the children up there with the older ones for the whole summer, and they would run down, two together, if someone broke a leg. Beautiful high pastures that you would never know existed from looking up from the town. Then past them, even higher, to a long ago lake, that is now a swamp or a bog that has many frogs in the summer. We walked across the lake to a patch of earth underneath the pines, ate apples and olives and cheese and almonds and jamon, and then flew down the snowy slopes (there was 2 to 3 feet of snow for the last 200 metres or so) by jumping into the drifts. It was beautiful. The view from the top is spectacular, so much more of the actual Pyrenees visible, their shiny snow surfaces gleaming in the sun. I woke up this morning to the first pure clear day in ages, and it was warm enough that we hiked up in t-shirts. The water was running in all the streams. Some of the old barns and cottages are caved in, but some have been redone recently, and are very cozy looking summer protection places. And the light is spectacular. We saw tracks of a bear, skunk, tons of birds, and deer, as well as the ploughed up parts of the pastures where the wild pigs had been digging in the night.

Once down, we were invited into Cisco and La La's house, which is directly above Cesca and Lluís'. He has rosemary fresh drying in the rafters, and each stone from his house has a story, literally. he started pointing them out, telling how this one came from a river near here, this one from Farrera valley, this one when he saw it from his car and pulled over. Cesca told stories of an extremely slow Reneau lugging itself up the hillside one day--of course it was Cisco's, and it was filled with rocks. His stairs are pieces of wood inset into the walls of the house itself by 18 inches, and have no supporting rail on the outside. Very beautiful. The only room that is finished is the bathroom, which looks like a display suite, and was done because his wife kept asking for an indoor toilet. Otherwise, the house is a work of art in progress, and his attention keeps getting diverted by pieces of wood that look like something, and that he must carve into full being with his knife. I swear sometimes this village feels very much like living in the gulf islands. He fed us wine out of a carafe that you tip quickly into your mouth, using a tiny spout, and pour and swallow until you're satisfied (the spout never touching your mouth) and tip it back, quickly, so as not to spill, and pass it on. He fed his cats the remains of the anchovies he was eating for lunch, and refused to come to dinner unless it was at at least 8:30pm. No earlier, please, for any self respecting Catalan. The normal hour, at this time of year, is more like around 9:30.

And now I am back and very tired, and will rest and read in bed. Happy Semana Santa, everyone.

Farrera, de nuevo

I am back in the mountains. Can Serrat was a disaster, and fortunately I kept my head just enough to be able to flee, as fast as I could. I am here until the 14th of April, at which point I'll descend into Barcelona for the last two weeks before I return to the island. It feels both a very long and very short time since I've been home. But in the meeantime, I am very happy to be out of that place and back in La Bastida, with view of fields and sound of river, rather than view of enlarged culvert and sound of freeway. The extra cost is worth the sanity, which is returning.

Farrera, Dusk

I think perhaps that I have never been anywhere that so thoroughly integrates the human and the natural world, and where their seemingly opposing ways of living come to some sort of understanding. Farrera defies history--despite its thousand year ago history as an iron smelting town, which made barren the hillsides--and its present day life is more and more beautiful to me.

Oppen and Anna keep a flock of sheep in the town. Oppen, short for Oppenheimer, was born here, his father a Jewish German refugee from the war. His mother still mourns the fact that, as the smartest of six children, he became a shepherd. He´s very happy. He takes pictures of the water in streams high up in the mountains, way above the village, and will have an exhibition of his work--beautiful, strangely coloured photos of the rocks, currents and air pockets in alpine streams--near Barcelona next month. He brought over his laptop the other night, and showed us a bundle of them. Anna has blue eyes and gazes far into the distance, even when she looks at you. She´s spent a lot of time concentrating on wilderness. It´s the deepest stare I´ve ever seen. They are both coming for dinner tonight, with their 10 year old son, for my final night at the centre.

If the mountains surrounding the village were completely covered in trees, and not partially fields, leading down to the streams, I would not be so aware of the sluicing, rocking topography. There is one set of fields in particular that seems to be caught in the act of a wave--as if a giant glass were waving them around to test their clarity. The terraced fields lead down to lower paddocks for horses, and the grain growing fields, and then the gardens, each villager to his or her plot. Lluís and Cesca´s, our hosts, have "hort" written in bright paint on the fence of theirs. The garlic is a foot high, and daffodils and anenomes are blooming despite the frequent snow. This morning we woke to about three inches, and it all melted by noon in the sun. Everywhere are paths, hundreds of years old, which link the valley´s villages in the old way--with slate and dirt tracks, rather than roads. I walked to Mallolis the other day and found completely different birds, fig trees, a friendly dog (of course) and one young couple. They are the only inhabitants of the village.

So, just as I begin to figure things out (the paths leading upriver, the lost lambs that call from the wrong side of the stream but don´t need saving, the strange pull such a hemmed in, but incredibly coloured winter landscape has for me, I am leaving, tomorrow on the 2:45 bus to the next residency. More time here I think I will need to spend at some point. Deciduous trees which are not in leaf have almost as much colour as those which are. You wouldn´t think it, but it´s true. I can tell the birch by their red tones, the poplar by their golden ones.

The lambs that didn´t need saving were on the far side of Farrera stream, lost from their mothers, who I saw on the village side. Oppen saw me as soon as I left the house, far before I had even glimpsed the lambs, and wondered to himself whether I would try to catch them and bring them home. (I already have a reputation here, from getting behind one ewe at 1:30 in the morning nights before, and pushing her in the direction of her barn, as she had separated from the flock and was munching the grass in the middle of the village. She moved, eventually, and I got to scratch her head while she trotted along.) Of course, I did try. And he had to yell at me to stop, from the other side, where he was watching with his sheep, an hour later. I settled for standing guard to make sure they didn´t run in the wrong direction. Oppen was very amiable about the whole thing, when I walked to meet him that evening in the village. "The one thing you can be sure of in a place like this is that you are seen by someone, somewhere, no matter how alone you feel." Small village life. Twenty people and still there´s always a lookout. I should know. But I had a secret fantasy of showing up with a lamb under each arm, the third trotting behind, having earned my stripes as a shepherd (my secret fantasy profession). I settled for making a long strand of handspun wool from the bits I gathered off rosebushes on the way home.

Canvas in Snow

Em, in ferocious wind, putting down an onsite installation of a painting, in 25 pieces, by Krista, a fellow resident. After chasing squares of canvas up the two feet of snow snowy hill a few times, I finally´"nailed" them down with snow pegs. The piece is a blown-up, pixelated version of a golf course, which is more than a little ironic around here. The picture was taken from the other side of the valley, where Krista was waiting on the balcony with a camera and an orange sweater (to wave, once photos had been taken).


The snow continues to fall and stay, and then melt a little in the hot afternoon sun. I´m going to go for a walk in it now. Tomorrow, they may even let the sheep out of their concrete tanker barn for a while to graze, if this warmth keeps up.

Room with a View

Hello all. A few pictures of where I´ve settled for the next two weeks or so. After taxi, plane, train, subway, metro, bus, taxi, with a stop to buy groceries, 4am til 9pm at night from Cambridge to 7 hours north of Barcelona. I am enveloped at 6000 feet in a slate roofed house, or set of houses, really, with a view across the valley to the unleafed trees, and down to the west to the Pyrenees and an open vista. It´s like Nepal (terraced fields, donkeys, horses running amuk in the road, dialects, sound of water everywhere, but the mountains are just a little shorter.


Hoses sticking out of the ground on the side of the mountains testify to the miracles of irrigation that they´ve performed here. Our hosts, Cesca and Lluís, came here in the 80´s, Spain´s decade for ´back to the land´. They raised two beautiful boys, who are now in their twenties and back for the winter, and rebuilt the ruins of a stone house for themselves, herding sheep in a cooperative before realizing that one herd does not a 8 person coop feed, and turned eventually to renovation of the nearby school, old house and barn for Farrera, Centre d´Art i Natura, which is now a modern, Ikea beauty on the inside, and a traditional, clinging to the side of a mountain, slate house on the outside. I am snug at night under down, and the sun beams in at 6am through the enormous windows.


I´ve been on two walks the first day, one to the hermitage that one of their sons is rebuilding using traditional stonework, which lies across the valley in another town with even fewer inhabitants (we´re talking, perhaps 15 people, as opposed to Farrera, which has 30), and the second down, or up, the road that leads, by four wheel drive, to Andorra. I met a Guardia Civil coming the other direction, or the Andorran equivalent, so even coming up here isn´t completely getting away from it all. I´ll be sure to find a car and try to pass him on a turn, just to make things more interesting. The first spring flowers that come up in Finnerty Gardens are here everywhere--shade loving, green-tinged flowers with hand shaped leaves. I wish I could remember what they were called. Those and early blue violets carpet the snow-flattened grass. One almond tree, which sends its scent everywhere. The rest, poplar and maple, cherry, some beech. None even close to leafing out yet. A sun and wind swept, overwhelming beauty to it. Tomorrow, to work on Perception and such.

Chopin, Sausage & Windows to the English Garden

Though I think to write about every two days, it seems that a month between posts has become the norm, and for the that I am regretful, as so much has happened, and it is impossible to get it down here in any kind of continuous detail.

Let me just start a little. After escaping sheep country, we drove at furious place down to another rented house in Ronda, a hill town about 45 minutes from the Mediterranean, equidistant from Sevilla, Malaga and Cordoba. Green rosemary and asparagus sprigs in the hills, caves, pine, and warm, warm days on the patio followed. Ronda has a bridge with its own species of crow, with orange beaks and feet, that dive amidst the cliffs of the old and the new city, under the bridge and into the caverns of limestone, shrieking in a delightful way. In Cordoba, I found the Sinogoga and bought my very own Menorah, as I have always been so envious of the rest of the family's plethora. Twisting streets, white painted walls, patios with roses just coming out in leaf. We took the dog for another swim in the undertow of the Mediterranean with a trip down to Malaga for the afternoon. Found a pine forest with a dozen varieties of orchids just coming into bloom on the way to a gorge with catwalk strung along its side to the east of Ronda, and the ruins of a Church/Mosque/something carved out of an entire moutain side.

Sevilla for two nights, staying in an apartment in the old city. I would commit serious crimes to live here for a long period, so lovely it was.


Now I am heading to the mountains after a weekend in Paris, a week with my friend Hephzibah in Cambridge and London, and a twisted metro trip into the centre of Barcelona, only to leave it again by bus.

Sheep, Granite and Thunderstorms

Sheep. More sheep. You´d think she would have gotten used to them by now, but still she perks up in the back seat and watches them as they go past, their shepherds and dogs in tow or in the lead. Perhaps, having lost her puppy coat, she’s just admiring the do. At least there aren’t any sheep in this picture, when we finally escaped Extremadura for the day, searching for another place to stay and ending up far further than we thought we would—at the edge of the western world, the Mediterranean, at sunset, just in time for a bottle of wine and a plethora of stick throwing, trying to convince her to stay out of the undertow. She was so happy that we didn’t leave for over an hour, and made it back near 1am, the fog drawing closer the further north we drove.

They both might as well have stayed at home. Here, in the land of extremes, there are thunderstorms, hail, rain, morning fog, wind (blew the neighbour’s terracotta tiles off this afternoon) and cold. Cold. Did I say cold? Puffy coats reign supreme. I’m wearing all my sweaters. The sheep are thick. The strangest thing, however, is that Juan Pablo, the owner of this house I’m renting, still asks, during our twice weekly Spanish/English exchanges, if it’s true how cold they say it is in Canada. “Better than here,” I think, and smile, and shake my head.

The people, however, do their best to make up for it. Last Saturday we were taken out by Juan Pablo, his wife Louisa, and their friends Marian and Ema. Tapas, bacalao, beer, wine, three different bars and a tour of the square. Spanish hospitality reigns supreme. They didn’t let me pay for a thing (other than a round of beer for 5€ at the end of the night) and entertained us thoroughly. I hope we were a tenth as charming. This Saturday, we’re invited for dinner. Every few days, they show up with sheep cheese, home-made chorizo, aged sheep cheese, dulces, or freshly washed linen. Thanks to conversations with Juan Pablo´s father at the local bar in Puerto Hurraco, an unmarked door next to the library where the men gather from 7-9:30 each night, my Spanish is improving. He told me all about the Javelines that they hunt here, and how one got away from him once, only to be killed by the neighbour the following week. “It was the strangest thing,” the neighbour apparently said, “the pig had an eye missing, as if he’d been shot before.” Juan Pablo’s father agreed that the neighbour should have offered up some of the pig, in thanks for making it easy prey.

We are staying in an old family home of Luisa’s, renovated by her, Juan Pablo and their friends. Across the inner patio is the barn which is now the kitchen, feeding trough still intact. There are beautiful tiles from the ‘50s in the main house. It took about four days to warm up, and now it’s very comfortable. Across the street is the Frenchman that Luke avoids, and Chico, the tiny man who buys bread at the same time as I buy eggs, from the egg and bread man, who shows up at 9am each morning, honking like a kamakaze. He used to bang on the door until we answered and bought. He finally gave up when we started getting our bread from town (his is terrible). Vegetable man comes every Wednesday, “¿Qué más, cosita?” he asks, over and over, until I walk away with bags bulging with tomatoes and zuccini.

After this Saturday´s dinner, we’re going to the tiny square of Castuera, the nearest town, to celebrate Carnaval. And then, next week, despite everyone’s absolute loveliness, we’re escaping to Andalucía.

The Almond in the Earth

Everyone becomes obsessed by something. For Elvira, the Russian/Estonian writer and translator, it was an apartment overlooking the sea at the far end of Mojácar Playa. She had decided, at the end of the first week of the residency, to move here. There was little work for her as a translator of Estonian literature after the collapse of the Soviet Union. She felt, living in her apartment in Tallin, that she had become unconnected from things, a stranger in her own country. “Estonians, they do not want me to translate. There is no more work,” she would say, her chin in the air, her beauty startling. From then on, she could talk of nothing other than housing options in Mojácar—an apartment in the English end, a flat in the centre of town, the marina that might be built on the west end of the beach. We were even coaxed into visiting one with her. (which we then tried to figure how to diplomatically talk her out of buying). It was like the ultimate intimacy to come out of a residency experience. People weren’t getting married—someone was actually going to continue living here! We lived vicariously, and fretfully, through her real estate adventures.

For others, quite a few of us, it was the mountain. Mojácar Vieja, which towered above the foundation. Reputedly the old site of the town, it is covered in pottery fragments from the Romans, the Visigoths, the Moors, the Spanish. They abandoned it when the town overgrew its site. Fragments of walls, terraced gardens and mortar still remain. The whole thing is an archaeological site. It can be reached from the almond tree fields at the back of the house, where, despite drought, the earth was always damp and soft. The trees began blooming in earnest a week before we left. Almond entering the windows.

Francis, who lives in Northern Nigeria, fantasized about climbing it, and to our knowledge, never did. His discomfort with heights. Even a road with small cliff on one side could make him swoon. Kåre used it as solace and mini-gym, climbing to the top to read for hours. Jill, though she only made it halfway up, used to jog around a field at its base. ‘Trotting’, she called it, which we loved.

Hephzibah and I became obsessed with the mountain itself, and specifically, the almond, carved, in the Roman era, into its peak. Divesting it of its peak. Turning peak into flat top, into cistern, lined with rocks, mortar and plaster, creating an almond shaped hollow at the top—peak turned inside out, peak become basin, cradle. The whole town, as it was, lived off the water that was saved in the cistern. Hephzibah photographed the entire mountain, from every angle that she could walk to, and then painted each view. Stones from the top became tracings, mirroring each view, until a virtual compass of portraits grew in her studio. I wrote about her process, wrote about the almond itself, wrote about the day she stretched string from one end of the peak to the other, and then again at the radius, until a horizonal cross was made, from which she hung stones, finding, in a way, the centre of the mountain. The stones and the string were still there when we left. Something about its strange openness found its way into almost every poem I wrote in January.

Francis said he was going to climb the mountain on the last day, when he would be the last one remaining at the Foundation until his 7pm bus to Madrid. He would have found small piles of pottery, a kind of compass of stone, a metronome made of string, and stone piled high at the edge of the almond, where one former resident climbed down inside to paint a picture of the inner walls and was caught up for hours.

Oh, and Elvira decided in the end to rent an apartment for six months before committing to a purchase. Though it is a beautiful place, we northerns/westerners all breathed collective sighs of relief.

Granada in Winter

I had a small panic attack the night before leaving, and didn´t sleep well. Came down the next morning intending to tell Hephzibah and Kåre that they would have to go on their own. “I really want you to come,” she said, and so I did. Silly me. I was fine as soon as I got on the bus.

Granada in winter is a quieter place. We found a 20€ hotel on the small street that winds up to the Alhambra, set our things down, and went out to explore for the day. Long, puffy coats are the fashion. The women hold their chins high, and no one scolds them for it. We wound our way along the river, where I once had the most amazing, outdoor concert experience of my life (flamenco) and headed up into the old Jewish and Arab district, the Albaicín. In a small square that overlooks the entire city, we stopped and sat for an hour, drawing, writing, talking, while behind us, a couple of flamenco guitarists busked, trading off with one another on the guitar, the free one hanging out with their friends. The sun shone down. It was warmish—-much warmer than the bus driver and his “Cuidado, cuidado, hace mucho frio en Granada. ¡Es minus 6 degrados!” had said when we boarded in Mojácar that morning. We descended when the sun fell, wandered some more. Almost found Kåre a coat (the temperature dropped at night and he eventually went around wearing my scarf and Hephzibah’s gloves), and then found the first of many tapas bars.

I have yet to figure out whether the price for the extremely cheap beer and Rioja wine includes a tapas, whether they add a few cents on to the top of the bill, or whether we were simply reaping the rewards of not coming in the tourist season, and so were able to sample life more as the locals live it. In any case, the small plates of shrimp, beef, jamon, potatoes fried in rosemary, paella, bread and cheese, olives and blood sausage were extraordinary. We didn’t buy a meal the entire time we were away, but stayed pleasantly tipsy, which made for even more delightful conversation.

The Alhambra, which we walked up to the next morning, is pure architecture in winter. Not just the buildings, but the bare vines, the rose bushes pruned down to stalks, the black earth with stubs of perennials, the arbours and cypress trees black against the sky. I took much longer than I should have going through, taking photos of the mosaics and carved plaster, and generally enjoying the quiet, the lack of people, the space that such beauty puts into your skin, making me feel my self as expanded and light with air.

In the afternoon we headed back down to the city for more tapas before our 5pm bus home. We sat in three separate seats on the way home, writing, watching the sun fall. Andalucía: white towns; scrub bush mountains which are full with herbs and pine; light.